The Borough Assembly will introduce the Fiscal Year 2015 budget at Tuesday night’s 6 pm meeting.
We spoke with Chief of Staff Paul Ostrander about the $1.3 million reduction in revenue, due to the property tax exemption borough residents voted for last year.
Ostrander: “Because of the reduction in revenue due to the tax exemption increase there are some service areas that are impacted by this pretty significantly. Central Emergency Services, Kachemak Emergency Service, and Bear Creek Emergency Service Area, all three of those were pretty significantly impacted by the change in the tax exemption. As far as the general government goes, the impacts were much less.”
Ostrander stated that the general government was not impacted as much due increased assessed values of oil and gas properties and also solid waste fees from oil and gas activities.
He added that the borough did well with what funding they received from the state’s capital budget.
Ostrander: “We were pleased with what we got, some of the projects that we had asked for we got funding less than what we had asked for but much of that was through direct communication with our legislators and working with them and trying to make sure that as many of the projects that we had got funded to a level that we felt could be successful.”
Tuesday’s meeting will be in Soldotna in the assembly chambers.